Language Overflow

Magsi

5:41 AM

Hi, I am new in this room.
Would you like to welcome me?
Specially my teachers @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. and @DamkerngT.

CopperKettle

5:57 AM

Good morning all.

I don't very much understand this comment:

Took me a while to see how this answer does in fact extend to other examples where "best" is used without "the": the deciding part is if the noun becomes "definite in [the] context", not whether or not there's a real noun. — Dan Getz 50 mins ago

I wonder if it's possible to use the with a dummy pronoun. Or maybe he meant some other thing..

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Pronouns don't usually take determiners.

Anonymous

Sometimes they do.

Anonymous

But I'm failing to think of a scenario where dummy it or there would take one.

CopperKettle

Good morning, Snails! I know they usually don't do that (0:

When I was composing the answer, I recalled things like "You are the best".

But that might be an ellipsis of "the best man", "the best one", etc.

Anonymous

Yeah, you can try to explain it that way.

Anonymous

6:06 AM

But what about the most important of them?

Anonymous

Do you think something is elided after most important?

CopperKettle

@snailboat Well, the pronoun them indicates some real-life objects

"The most important one of them"

"It is most important that you leave this message at 19:00" <<< Dummy it, no reference to some real noun.

Anonymous

Yeah, I guess one(s) works.

Anonymous

I guess the ellipsis approach works.

Anonymous

How about this:

Anonymous

6:09 AM

> She ran [ the fastest ~~that~~ she had ever run ].

CopperKettle

"the fastest run/lap"?

Anonymous

What if we're just talking about her speed?

CopperKettle

Then it becomes tricky.

Maybe that's an ellipsis of "She ran at the fastest speed", but then "she had ever run" fails to attach. "She ran at the fastest speed" she had ever run at"? O_o

Anonymous

A lot of the time, you have a choice between analyzing something as ellipsis or just analyzing it the way it is.

Anonymous

I don't know which is simpler in the case of superlatives.

Anonymous

6:14 AM

Or comparatives.

CopperKettle

We can say that there's something implied after the fastest, something noun-like. A ghost noun.

@snailboat Comparatives?

the more the merrier?

Anonymous

the more important of the two

Anonymous

But yes, The more, the merrier! is an example of comparatives, it's just a bit special.

CopperKettle

Yes, I know. It's a vestige of the case system.

Which is still allive in Russian --- чем больше, тем веселее (the more the merrier!)

I wonder if "expletive-pronoun" is the same as "dummy-pronoun". We have both tags. I've just noticed expletive-pronoun. We might merge them somehow.

There's a great explanation of extraposition in a relative clause.

lekon chekon

6:40 AM

Hey.
I was wondering, should one use the past perfect even when there's no ambiguity, or should one keep to using the simple past?

When writing the test yesterday, i used the pen i had found in my bag.
When writing the test yesterday, i used the pen i found in my bag.

CopperKettle

Hey. I dunno. I'd use the second sentence, it's shorter.

lekon chekon

Should i put it up as a question on the main site?

CopperKettle

You might! You will turn into an expert on Past Perfect and Backshifting! (0:

lekon chekon

Backshifting.
I still struggle with that.
I wonder if backshifting an entire sentence, or mixing tenses changes its meaning.

If i bought that apartment, we'd have a place to party whenever we wished.
If i bought that apartment, we'd have a place to party whenever we would wish.
If i bought that apartment, we'd have a place to party whenever we wish.

._.

CopperKettle

With your chess skills and English skills, you might just read a chapter from CGEL or Quirk, make a summary in a copy-book, write a blog post about it, and it will be you whom people will approach with such questions.

(busy answering a question at ELL)

lekon chekon

7:14 AM

xD ah. i wish. xD

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Yes, they mean the same thing.

Anonymous

They both refer to a pronoun that is used for syntactic reasons, but doesn't have any meaning of its own.

Anonymous

I think dummy is the better choice.

CopperKettle

Yes, dummy is easier to understand.

An interesting quote I've dug up while answering a question:

> On the other hand, the linguists Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum claim that utterances such as "They invited Sandy and I" are "heard constantly in the conversation of people whose status as speakers of Standard English is clear"; and that "Those who condemn it simply assume that the case of a pronoun in a coordination must be the same as when it stands alone. Actual usage is in conflict with this assumption."

lekon chekon

@snailboat, i thought you were talking to me, and you inadvertently put in copper's name in place of mine.

:|

I looked up the book, is it written by Geraldine Woods?

CopperKettle

7:28 AM

What book?

lekon chekon

dummy?

English grammar for dummies? ._.

Anonymous

We were talking about the technical term dummy pronoun.

CopperKettle

I did not mention it. (0:

But generally speaking, the series "for Dummies" is a fun read. I used it when studying programming languages.

lekon chekon

._.) well, don't i feel silly now.

Still, just to confirm, when you said "Yes, they mean the same thing.", you weren't referring to my sentences, right? @snailboat

CopperKettle

A great book would be a book containing the text of Swan's PEU but with hyperlinks to pages in both CGEL and Quirk. So that you could read a simple explanation first, and then dive into deeper matter if so you wish.

"If i bought that apartment, we'd have a place to party in whenever we wish(ed)". --- looks okay to me. I would only add in.

lekon chekon

7:33 AM

simple explanation first, please.

Dam told me to go through Swan's Practical English Usage.
It's coming in handy.
But it doesn't cover everything i have a doubt about.

CopperKettle

Now that I've read your sentences, I doubt whether I should have wrote "if so you wish" or "if so you wished".

D'oh.

Anonymous

@lekonchekon You can tell which message I was replying to if you go back and click on the arrow that appears to the left of the message I typed.

lekon chekon

And i've been wondering, does it matter what tense i using after i'm done with the if + past simple/ present simple , ...would/will part?

Since copper says
If i bought that apartment, we'd have a place to party whenever we wished.
and
If i bought that apartment, we'd have a place to party whenever we wish.
mean the same.

CopperKettle

@lekonchekon My reasoning is that "whenever we wish" does not strictly belong to the apodosis "we'd have a place to party". It's just an additional clause.

lekon chekon

._.) i wonder when i'm gonna attain a good grasp of how things work. ._.

Anonymous

7:42 AM

I think to party whenever we wish(ed) is a constituent.

Anonymous

@lekonchekon They both work.

lekon chekon

what does a constituent mean?

Anonymous

Constituents are how you divide up sentences.

Anonymous

Like, noun phrases, for example.

lekon chekon

I see.

well, that makes things easier for me, i guess.

CopperKettle

7:46 AM

maybe "whenever we wished" is more "distanced", less achievable from the standpoint of the speaker.

lekon chekon

we use past tense to talk about the hypothetical, right?

CopperKettle

Or just to comply with the overall tense of the sentence/clause

lekon chekon

so, if a person wasn't to divide up sentences, how would they know what tense to go with?

CopperKettle

0

Q: Meanng of past-tense "wished" in If "i bought that apartment, we'd have a place to party whenever we wished"

Both these conditional sentences are grammatical: If i bought that apartment, we'd have a place to party whenever we wish. If i bought that apartment, we'd have a place to party whenever we wished. Is there a slight difference in meaning between wish and wished though? Does the p...

conditional-constructions

Now I'll go to the store. Good bye! (0:

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